Hi, and welcome to Line Sheet. I’m now two years into writing this email, and
it’s getting weird out there.
In today’s issue, I’ve got the evolving story of Christine Hunsicker, an entrepreneur enmeshed with numerous brands (maybe yours) and investors (including Bill Ackman) who was just ousted from her company, the clothing-rental platform Caastle, amid accusations of fraud. Hunsicker is also a partner in P180, the investment firm that owns
stakes in Altuzarra and Elyse Walker, and recently bought a majority stake in Vince. Up top, you’ll find requisite updates on LVMH and Saks Global. For a bit of levity, I also reveal a Keith McNally book party scheduling snafu.
In other news: I went to Maxfield on Saturday. I’ve only been a couple of times. It was busy, probably because they have everything.
Men’s and women’s. Phoebe Philo bags. Miu Miu track jackets. Gucci mini skirts. That strip of West Hollywood draws such a particular crowd. (Lots of sweats; guys with waxed eyebrows.) Is this the only place left where people are still shopping?
Programming note: Tomorrow on Fashion
People, Marisa Meltzer is back to discuss Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent P.R. tour, the state of Brooks Brothers, vacation clothes, various scandals, and plenty more. Listen here and here.
And one more thing: This past week, many people have come to me with information they’ve said they simply couldn’t share with anyone else. That, my friends, is what people call business intelligence. If you aren’t yet benefiting, now’s the time to subscribe! And remember, we do corporate memberships. Email Fritz@puck.news
for more info on those favorable rates.
Mentioned in this issue: Christine Hunsicker, Caastle, Rent the Runway, Bill Ackman, George Goldenberg, P180, Anna Wintour, LVMH, Louis Vuitton, Francesca Amfitheatrof, Alexandre Arnault, Remo Ruffini, Saks Global, Richard
Baker, Bulgari, Jean-Christophe Babin, and many more…
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Three Things You Should Know…
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- Would
you rather: The Met Gala or Keith McNally’s book party?: New York’s most famous restaurateur and author of the forthcoming memoir I Regret Almost Everything, is closing down Balthazar on the evening of May 5 for a book party featuring “readings” by actor Richard E. Grant and “songs” by Sandy Dalziel and Lily Kershaw. May 5, of course, is also the date of the Met Gala, which poses a conflict for Costume Institute co-chair Anna Wintour, who is a good friend of McNally’s. (At least according to Instagram. I haven’t read the book yet, although I hear it’s fabulous.)
What gives? Well,
I Regret Almost Everything comes out May 6. Also: The guest overlap is certainly very low. (The museum fundraiser used to be for socialites; now it’s populated mostly by Condé Nast advertisers, who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per table, which Wintour then populates with her chosen mix of celebrities.) As for Wintour not being able to make it to Balthazar? I’m told this isn’t the only celebration McNally is hosting (there’s a Tuesday dinner as well), so perhaps she has RSPV’d
for another, more intimate event.
By the way, if you’re not invited to either party on Monday, May 5, there’s always the Sean Combs trial, which starts that morning.
- In the valley of LVMH: After the news regarding the curious exit of Louis Vuitton fine jewelry designer Francesca Amfitheatrof was leaked last week, the powers that be on Avenue Montaigne made some less surprising moves. Alexandre
Arnault, co-C.E.O. of Moët Hennessy and an heir apparent, was nominated to the board of Remo Ruffini–controlled Italian outerwear brand Moncler, which LVMH invested in last year. Not only is there a scenario where Moncler, which also owns Stone Island, becomes a part of LVMH down the road, but this also offers Alexandre yet another opportunity to observe skilled operators at work. There’s really no one who manages an outerwear business better than Ruffini and his
team.
Meanwhile, Bulgari C.E.O. Jean-Christophe Babin has been given another gig: Along with running the Italian jewelry brand, he will oversee the LVMH Watch Group—which includes TAG Heuer, Hublot, and Zenith—now that Alexandre’s little brother, Frédéric, has vacated that seat as he heads to Loro Piana. Babin reports to group managing director Stéphane Bianchi, who is essentially second-in-command to Bernard Arnault.
- Further existential thoughts on Saks Global: Emo department store geeks were given a reason to believe on Friday after the city of Dallas and Saks Global announced that the downtown Neiman Marcus store would stay open at least through the end of the year. (City officials convinced the landlord to let up.) To be honest, I’m not sure this is the right answer. That store is unproductive, and nobody shops in that neighborhood. While the communications
around the closure were mishandled, it probably should close.
Anyway, at least this temporary gesture will keep the peace as Saks Global attempts to sort out its vendor payment issues and other stuff, some of which I wrote about last week. However, Saks Global is only half of the headache for executive chairman Richard Baker,
who is getting clobbered in Canada for letting Hudson’s Bay Company get to the point of liquidation.
Again, I’m not sure Baker had a choice in that case, either. Looking back on the past decade of retail bankruptcies and closures, the only certainty is that smaller is better. Most of these companies have a few stores that are incredibly productive and profitable overall. It’s unfortunate for consumers in cities where none of those stores are, but how can a store remain open if it’s not
making money?
Over these past few months, I’ve wondered why Baker hasn’t resorted to selling more leases and buildings to increase his liquidity. He is, after all, a real estate guy, whose separate family business, National Realty & Development Corp., seems to be chugging along nicely. There’s little doubt that Saks Global is in a more challenging situation than was anticipated pre-close, and there are plenty of predators waiting on the sidelines, steepling their fingers together,
Mr. Burns-style, hoping that some of Saks Global’s most prized possessions hit the market. After all, a bankruptcy would allow the group to truly restructure, rationalize the real estate portfolio, etcetera.
But this week I was reminded by people close to Baker and beyond that, despite his roots in real estate, he wants to be a retail mogul, and so he’s going to do what he can to make the Saks-Neiman merger work. Hudson’s Bay, Lord & Taylor—perhaps those were just casualties
along the journey. The tricky part, of course, is that Saks Global is subject to both macroeconomic and industrial pressures (recession, tariffs, etcetera) and its own set of unique headaches (like receivables and managing brand relationships). Let’s see what happens once those vendor payments come due in July.
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Back when everyone wanted to be a tech company, Caastle pitched itself as a miracle software
solution for struggling retailers to turn deadstock into a rental business. Last week their C.E.O. abruptly exited, the company furloughed its employees, and the management team told the board to disregard the previous years’ financials. What could possibly go wrong?
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In 2018, American retail executive Christine Hunsicker debuted Caastle, a
“clothes-as-a-service” platform to create and manage subscription rentals for fashion brands. Hunsicker pitched the company, conceived as a sort of B2B version of Rent the Runway, as a way for brands to generate sales on their deadstock inventory and acquire new customers along the way.
The argument was convincing enough to brands and investors alike: Most fashion labels have a glut of inventory and struggle to
continually turn a profit. And Hunsicker had already developed the infrastructure from her plus-size clothing rental platform, Gwynnie Bee, as the blueprint. Layering a rental service onto traditional e-commerce could potentially alleviate cashflow issues and, if Hunsicker was correct, increase profits overall. It sounded like a smart idea.
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Over the years, few people questioned Hunsicker’s thesis. According to several sources
familiar with the company, Hunsicker claimed that Caastle generated hundreds of millions in revenue in 2024—which would, theoretically, mean processing billions of dollars worth of apparel rental sales. (She also sold the concept to influencers, enticing them to rent their own clothes. She called it “Caastle for Creators.”) It was the sort of model that serious investors could get behind: a lean software-as-a-service platform with low capex costs, annual recurring revenue, and
largely moated from the whims of taste. There were a bunch of V.C. firms on the Caastle cap table, and they appeared alongside legendary investors like Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire, and Henry Kravis, one of the forefathers of the private equity industry. (Notably, both appear to have invested personally, outside of their firms. Ackman invested in 2014, when it was still called Gwynnie Bee, and owns significantly less than 1 percent of the company.)
On Sunday, however, Caastle investors received a letter from the board stating that the company was in “a severe and immediate liquidity crisis,” that employees would be put on a two-week furlough, and that Hunsicker was resigning as C.E.O. amid a law enforcement investigation into some alleged creative accounting. “We are fully cooperating with their investigations and are committed to maintaining
the highest standards of integrity and accountability,” the letter continued, noting that C.O.O. George Goldenberg would serve as interim C.E.O. “It is important to note that based on our review, no other member of the management team has been found to be aware of Christine’s misconduct.” The letter to investors also included audited financial results from 2022 and 2023. Shareholders were advised to refer to these audited results only. Caastle’s 2024 revenue,
according to numerous sources, was actually $16 million.
The challenges outlined in the letter were significant. “The performance to date has not matched what Christine claimed—we have learned that Christine provided certain investors with misstated financial statements and 2 falsified audit opinions, as well as capitalization information that understated the number of company shares
outstanding,” the letter noted. “If you have received any financial or capitalization information from Christine in the past, you cannot rely on that information.” I’m told that the board is currently attempting to raise bridge funding in order to keep the company afloat, and presumably to protect their initial capital investments.
I sent Hunsicker and Caastle several requests for comment on the aforementioned points.
Hunsicker did not respond. A rep for Caastle responded with the following: “The Board is deeply disappointed by the conduct that has led to this moment. Our immediate focus is on addressing the company’s challenges, supporting our employees, and preserving the value of our technology and business operations. We regret having to temporarily furlough our employees, but we believe this will best position the company to successfully recover from our current situation.”
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Cap tables can tell you a lot about a company, and certainly a lot about a founder. To wit:
Caastle was a fashion-adjacent SaaS business without a lot of investors who had fashion industry experience. And Hunsicker was a battle-tested entrepreneur who certainly knew her way around a fundraising circuit. Hunsicker had already raised more than $500 million to fund Caastle (according to a report in Axios, it was $534 million). And as recently as last
week, she was trying to raise even more, according to multiple people. She told some potential investors that the company had $400 million in the bank.
According to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, the board first started to question Hunsicker in December 2024. Caastle chair John Hennessy, the current chairman of the board of Alphabet and the former
president of Stanford, stepped down from the board that month. (Hennessy did not respond to a request for comment.) He was replaced by Jaswinder Pal Singh, a computer science professor at Princeton and Hunsicker’s co-founder at Caastle, but had been off the board for three years. I’ve been told that a board member flagged the company’s accounting results to government authorities.
Meanwhile, Hunsicker’s most significant connection to the fashion
industry may be P180, the venture firm she co-founded with another longtime retail executive, Brendan Hoffman, in 2024. In the fashion world, Hoffman is a known quantity. Before P180, he was the C.E.O. of Wolverine, and before that, Vince. He got his start at Neiman Marcus Group, where he ran the e-commerce piece in the early days.
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Hunsicker’s idea was apparently to use Caastle technology to power rental services on
e-commerce sites that she would invest in through P180. According to multiple sources, Caastle issued a loan to P180 to fund the business at the start, with additional capital thrown in by other investors. In recent months, I’m told, Hunsicker traveled to Dubai to raise additional money for P180, to make further acquisitions. According to a February 2025 fundraising deck I viewed, the plan was to “acquire great retailers at low valuations,” including a luxury e-tailer with approximately $125
million in sales.
The firm’s early bets included Pacific Palisades–headquartered retailer Elyse Walker, New York–based ready-to-wear brand Altuzarra, and, most recently, a majority stake in Vince, the mid-priced essentials brand where Hoffman was then reinstalled as C.E.O. P180’s portfolio was on track to generate $372 million this year in sales, according to the deck. Hunsicker was
looking to raise an additional $150 million-$200 million to complete three more deals.
Many big brands and retailers nearly bought in. (If you want to know who she asked… the answer is everybody.) People with whom I spoke described Hunsicker’s plea as incredibly convincing: The traditional retail model, as we all know, doesn’t work, and acquiring customers is more expensive than ever. She wanted to build in a rental
service that helped generate cash on otherwise dead inventory, while acquiring new full-price customers. “She had serious big dick energy,” one prospective partner told me regarding her pitch.
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Hunsicker may have been incredible at many of the grittier elements of
entrepreneurship—raising capital, selling an idea, building a team, and chasing a vision—but perhaps she underestimated some of the multifaceted challenges of the fashion industry. For brands, adding a rental component to their e-commerce experience helped with customer acquisition and sloughing off old inventory, but it created a whole new layer of logistical headaches that added costs and complexity. It’s understandable why brands would want to at least believe in Hunsicker’s vision,
but it was probably easier to sell old inventory to Rent the Runway or Nuuly.
Hunsicker may have started Caastle as a fashion outsider, but a number of industry-relevant questions abound as this drama plays out. Will Caastle receive the requisite life support capital? Do its investors have a claim on P180? And then there are the outcomes for the platform brands. P180 owns 60 percent of Vince, which is a public company.
Their stake in Altuzarra is just 25 percent. Its deal with Elyse Walker, which was decimated during the Palisades fires, is described as a “strategic partnership” in the fundraising deck, but the size of the investment remains unclear. Anyway, this is where we are. And I can’t say I’m surprised by any of it.
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What I’m Reading… and
Watching…
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On Saturday night, Madonna wore Willy Chavarria to the Mother Daughter
Holy Spirit runway show fundraiser, benefiting the Trans Justice Funding Project. Cynthia Nixon walked the show and Julie Ragolia styled. (Julie organized all the looks, from Conner Ives, Diotima, Vaquera, Willy Chavarria, Willie Norris, Valentino, and more.) The event was one piece of a three-part fundraiser. You can also shop pieces from the closets of Julia Fox, Hari Nef, Chloë Sevigny, and others throughout
the month of April via Motherdaughterholyspirit.nyc. [Harper’s Bazaar]
Remember Eugenia
Gonzalez, Michael Bastian’s incredibly gorgeous, nice, and generally helpful comms exec? [RePressed]
It’s funny that the costumes in The Studio are so good, given that the show itself makes fun of how poorly people dress in
Hollywood. (All the money goes to the houses.) Anyway, I love this show, and so do a lot of my friends who live this life. Why does entertainment get this, and all fashion gets is Emily in Paris, and all journalism gets is The Newsroom? I guess it pays off to write what you know.
[Apple TV+]
QVC laid off 900 employees last week.
[WWD]
What’s not to love about Lauren Sánchez’s Alaïa skirt and Balenciaga coffee cup clutch?
[Glamour]
Victoria Beckham has a new C.E.O. who most recently managed the leather goods business at Dior.
[WWD]
Justin Bieber hired another stylist to work on his everyday wardrobe. (His wife, Hailey, has a similar setup.) [GQ]
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And finally… Let’s bring back the
ringer tee for real this time?
Until tomorrow,
Lauren
P.S.: We are using affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.
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An essential, insider-friendly Hollywood tip sheet from Matthew Belloni, who spent 14 years in the trenches at The
Hollywood Reporter and five before that practicing entertainment law. What I’m Hearing also features veteran Hollywood journalist Kim Masters, as well as a special companion email from Eriq Gardner, focused on entertainment law, and weekly box office analysis from Scott Mendelson.
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